Over the operational life of a turbine system, components of the system require regular inspection and/or maintenance. The inspection processes performed on the turbine system may ensure that the components are not damaged, obstructed, properly aligned/positioned, and/or functioning at a desired efficiency level so the turbine system may generate the greatest amount of energy without damaging the system. When the inspection process determines that there is an operational and/or functional issue with a component of the turbine system (e.g., damaged, misaligned and so on), maintenance (e.g., repair, replacement and the like) may be performed on the component and/or system before the turbine system become operational again.
Adequate inspection of the components of the turbine system may be difficult however because of the configuration of the system. For example, a rotor of the turbine system may be encased and/or enclosed within a housing and may include and/or be surrounded by a plurality of features (e.g., turbine buckets, stators and so on) crucial to the operation of the turbine system. As a result, the clearance and accessibility of the rotor of the turbine system may be limited; making inspection of the rotor difficult. In conventional processes, the rotor may be visually inspected by an operator by removing some components on and/or surrounding the rotor. However, the quality of the visual inspection may vary and may depend on the operator conducting the inspection.
In other conventional processes, the rotor may be removed from the housing, and conventional inspection devices, such as sensors, may be used when performing the inspection process. However, the conventional inspection devices may have a difficult time accurately inspecting the rotor because of the number of unique geometries and/or features included on the rotor. Specifically, the non-uniform geometries and/or features included on the rotor of the turbine system may obstruct and/or block lines of sight between the conventional inspection devices used to inspect the rotor. Where the line of sight is obstructed, the results of the inspection generated by the conventional inspection device may be skewed and/or incomplete because the conventional inspection devices have trouble accurately inspecting areas of the rotor that include these unique geometries and/or features.